CW 499 – Jason Hartman – Deceptive Practices at Clayton Homes & Memphis Tennessee Property Tour Preview

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com. Welcome to Creating wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven't thought of before and a new slant on investing. Fresh, new approaches to America's best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a giant, genuine, self made multimillionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He's been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors. Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. This is episode number 499. 499. The Big 500 is coming up next. Wow. Wow. It's been a long time. Thank you so much for listening to the show and telling your friends about it and writing reviews on itunes or wherever you're listening to the show. We really appreciate your reviews and we're gonna just keep on going and providing you the best possible content we can. Episode 500, we're gonna have Guy Kawasaki, a very famous guy in the world of technology, and I think you'll be interested in that one. And I am headed off to Necker island to hang Sir Richard Branson. Yes, it's my second trip there. I went two years ago and I'm headed out to do that again here in just a few days. So I'm gonna see if I can get an interview with Richard Branson for you, too. I hope so. I hope I can score an interview. So we'll see how that goes. And gosh, it is actually Easter as I'm recording this. So happy Easter to everybody around the world, our listeners in 164 countries. Gosh. Let's dive in. A bunch of things to talk about today on today's show. Number. Got an announcement for you and it's pretty exciting. Yes, yes, yes. We scored something that I really wanted to score for you. Any of you attending our Memphis property tour, you may really see Elvis, because guess what? On Saturday night, we have booked a dinner at Graceland. Yes, dinner at Graceland for all of our tour guests. So if you were on the fence about coming to the Memphis property tour, this was the big deal that I really wanted to do. We've got Dinner at Elvis Presley's home. Now, listen, I'm no big Elvis fan or anything. I mean, I guess he's, you know. Okay, that's just kind of cool, right, that we're having dinner at Graceland. It's an iconic, fascinating thing to do. So we were able to book a private dinner that's just for our group at Graceland on Saturday night on the property tour. So go to jasonhartman.comevents and join us for the property tour on May 2nd and 3rd, and that will include dinner at Graceland. And by the way, all your meals are included with the tour, so, you know, unless you got to eat some others. But all the planned meals are included, so that's all included. And the tour cost, and that's just going to be a really fun event. I'm. You know, last time we did a Memphis tour, two years ago, we were not able to book the Graceland dinner. And I just. I wanted to do that two years ago. And I'm so glad we can do it. And, you know, that is such an active market for us. Memphis, Tennessee it seems like every other closing lately that we have in the company. By the way, business is just out of control, booming. It's been great. As of about a month ago, I checked the pipeline report, and we were only, I think, 76 days into the new year and already had 193 transactions in the pipeline. So that is far and away. I'm pretty sure our best year ever. And thank you so much for your business and your support, and we will continue to support you, helping you make your investment dreams come true. That's what we're here for. If you have problems, if you have challenges, which you certainly will, okay, Everybody does. You can't escape them. It seems like we're here to help you with those. If you need help with your property managers, if you need help with vendors, let us know. You know, one of the things that really just drives us crazy is when we hear a client come to us and they say, gosh, you know, I had all these problems a few months ago, and we think, why didn't you come to us? We could have helped you with that. That's what we're here for. So take advantage of it. It's free, okay? It's just all included. When you buy properties through our network, we offer lifetime support, lifetime rental coordination, and there's no charge at all for that. Okay? So that's what we're here for. Use it. There's no charge, okay? So you might as well Use it. So, anyway, I hope you join us for the Memphis property tour and we will have dinner at Graceland. Very cool. I bet we're going to get some good pictures and maybe we'll see Elvis. If we don't see Elvis, we'll probably see the ghost of Elvis. Right? So it should be a great time. Should be a lot of fun. So where do we want to start? Well, you know, how about if we start today's show? Got a bunch of things I want to talk to you about, but, you know, let's start with a few questions. Okay. Listener questions are always great. We so much appreciate you going to jasonhartman.com and just using the website to ask a question. Here are a couple of them. I'm going to play them for you and then I will answer them.

Hey, Jason, Steve G. Jones again.

From.

The Hypnotherapist Millionaire, who's on Millionaire, Matchmaker and Bravo's Below Deck as a millionaire. I'm just pointing at all that millionaire stuff to show you that I'm a millionaire. And so I know a little bit about money. I just did some calculations. I got a hold of the average interest rate paid by banks for the last 20 years, which was about 4.5% on average. This is the interest rate paid on savings accounts in banks, 4.5% approximately on average for the past 20 years. And then I got a hold of the average rate of inflation for the same period, approximately 2.5% savings account. And I know this doesn't account for taxes, but. But minus that, savings accounts beat inflation by almost doubling it. So, I mean, that's fully backed by the FDIC. Yeah, you can only have 250,000 per account, but you can add a co signer on, you know, add someone else to your account and have 500,000 in it. And you can also open multiple savings accounts, all of which, as long as they don't exceed 250, will be insured by the FDIC. So, I mean, why all this real estate stuff? Why buying houses and selling houses and, you know, why not make your life easier? Why not just put your money in savings accounts? Let me know.

Okay, so that is a really interesting question. So first of all, Steve, you're a hypnotist. I think you've been hypnotized by the powers that be, my friend. My God, are you serious? Is that really a question? Okay. There are so many layers to that. Let's peel back the onion. First of all, you did have the understanding that, of course, your interest on A savings account is taxed. However, I'm not sure you really realize the impact of that, especially when it's compounded. So if your combined state and federal tax bracket is say 40%, you know, just. It depends where you live, of course, what state. But that takes your 4.5%, which is your number. I have not verified any of these numbers, but let's assume they're accurate. So your number of an average savings account return of 4.5%. And by the way, I don't know what kind of savings account that is. It's probably a long term cd, so you've got to lock up your money, I assume for, you know, a few years at a time, but whatever. Okay, so that, that means your net after taxes is only 2.7%. So just understand the taxes. You mentioned it, but you didn't seem to really like act like it was any big deal in the way you were talking about it. That's a huge deal. You're getting 40% of your return confiscated. So your 4.5% return goes to 2.2.7% on average. Now remember, you got to understand the compounding effect of that. First of all, you know, you, I don't think you've been listening to the show very long, okay? So please go back and listen to the old episodes, okay? And by the way, I know you left another message about that which I'll address in a moment here because you know, and I have proven it so many times and given so many hundreds and hundreds of examples over the years in the past 498 episodes. And you know that inflation, that rate of inflation is massively understated by the government, okay? It is massively understated. So when you take into account taxes stealing approximately 40% of your return, taking your return down to 2.7%. And you said the average inflation rate, by the way, these are your numbers, I haven't checked them. According to the official stats, is 2.5%. That's massively understated. Nobody, nobody in their right mind would agree that we've had an average inflation rate over the past 20 years of two and a half percent. I mean, are you kidding me? Look at the price of health care, look at the price of real estate, look at the price of education, look at the price of food. I mean, food prices have not massively increased, okay? And you know, I've talked about this one before too. But when you look at the real estate prices, those are so misguided because when you look at the inflation of them, you know, you get a lot less than you used to. And I was just looking at houses a few days ago for my potential move back to the Socialist Republic of California because I've got this huge tax write off in that state that I can't take unless I reestablish residency. So literally just doing it for that reason. But when I would look, I was looking around La Jolla, of course. Gorgeous area, totally overpriced. I wasn't going to buy anything. I'm just gonna rent, okay? Because it doesn't make sense to buy in these very expensive markets like that. You can get a much better deal renting. But I would look at newer properties and older properties and the comparison of overall lifestyle because of the density of the development plays into the inflation rate of real estate. See, the real appreciation or inflation rate of real estate is much higher than it's quoted. So, you know, you take the average home, and I've given the example before of the area where I'm from, Newport Beach, California, there's this area called Harborview Homes. That's the sort of yuppie area where a lot of people want to live. You know, it's really expensive nowadays, but back in the 70s when those homes were built, you could buy one of those for like $43,000. Now granted, the person buying a home nowadays in Newport beach or Irvine, California, which is a neighboring city, they might adjust for inflation and say, well, the home you're going to buy nowadays, the standard of living has improved because people are living in more square footage. But they didn't take into account the style of home, the fact that now it's a stacked up, you know, condo type home or a little cluster house where, you know, your neighbor is within arm's reach, versus living, living in Harborview Homes in the 70s where you've got, you know, yards and space and ample parking. I mean, it's a whole different experience. So the point is the infection inflation rate is bogus. It's totally understated in so many ways. Okay, but the big one is this. You asked a question that I just thought was kind of crazy. Like, I don't know, you know, what's the big deal about all this real estate stuff when you can beat inflation according to, you know, the numbers you cited. Now, I think we've kind of pierced that theory quite a couple of ways here already. But you said you can beat inflation by just putting your money in the bank. But first of all, if you can beat inflation, let's assume that was Even true, which it's not. Okay, that's not true. But let's assume that it was true. Okay? If you can beat inflation by a little bit, wouldn't you rather beat it by a lot? I mean, if you can get returns on real estate exceeding 20% annually because it's a multi dimensional asset class and you get returns from multiple places. Okay, remember, real estate is ideal, okay? You've got all of those, that acronym, ideal, Google it. I've explained it before. Just type in real estate is ideal as an acronym, okay? And you'll get all those. But it's a multi dimensional asset class, so you get return from so many places, places. And you can, I say, very realistically exceed 20%. So assuming that was even true, that you could beat inflation in a savings account, why would you want to beat it by a little bit when you can beat it by a lot? I mean, isn't that the whole point here, to do something big? Yes, it is. So do something big. Okay. Anyway, I wanted to address your other question. I'm not going to play that message on the air because I kind of thought it was a little bit self promotional. But you did ask a fair question, and that is, why do I do Flashback Friday? Okay, so this was one of your other questions left on a separate message. And the reason is, is that we used to do shows once a week or even less, you know, over the years. And I started doing them three times a week and I just had a lot of content to get out there. And for several months we were doing three new shows a week and I was just kind of finding, look, I gotta have some time to run my business here. Doing three shows a week is a lot because, you know, I do a bunch of other shows too. You know, I've got a bunch of other podcasts if you want to find those. Go to hartmanmedia.com or just type Jason Hartman in the iTunes store and you'll see them all. So doing three shows a week for the Creating wealth show was just becoming kind of overwhelming. And so when I said I was gonna go to two shows a week, I got some hate mail. You know, don't stop. You gotta do three shows a week. What I discovered is that people hadn't listened to a lot of the old episodes. So I kind of handpick these Flashback Friday episodes and do a rerun every Friday. Now they're clearly labeled fbf, which means Flashback Friday. So skip those if you want. Okay, but you said, well, we can go back and listen to the old Episodes on itunes. No, you can't. Okay. Itunes only holds 100 episodes. Okay. It doesn't go back to 500 episodes. So that's another good reason for Flashback Friday. Now you can go to jasonartman.com but it's not as easy and seamless as using itunes and getting the feed right from from there. And we are going to set up to make it easier to access the old episodes on itunes and some of the other platforms. We're going to set up archives, which are like separate shows, and then you can access all the episodes. So we are working on that. Okay. Okay. So let's move on to another question.

Hi, Jason, my name is Justin. I'm calling from San Diego. I had a question about how you personally decide to allocate your investment funds between your direct business and in buying rental or income property. I ask because I own my own business as well. And any day if I were to put, say, $30,000 into my own business, I could make a higher return more quickly than if I put that into rental income property. But at the same time, obviously, when you invest in your own business, that's much less passive. There's probably other considerations. So I was just interested in hearing your thoughts on how you do it or maybe ways to consider how you allocate between the different types of investments we make. I love the show and hope to hear soon. Thanks.

Hey, Justin. Okay, so that was a really good question. Thank you for asking it. You know, many of our listeners are entrepreneurs, or if they're not entrepreneurs, they have a little side entrepreneurial venture and maybe they work or corporate job as their day job. Here is the thing. Yes, you are probably right. Investing in your own business can probably bring you a higher return more quickly than investing in an income property can. However, there are definitely some considerations. Okay. So of course that effort isn't only from the capital. It takes your time. It takes your time to manage it. If you're going to hire people in your business, you've got to manage them, and they can certainly become mistakes. I've got many friends who have hired people in their business. You know, one, he said he's going to work on his business, not in his business. And he hired a CEO to run his business. This was a fairly big insurance company. And he said he lost easily a million dollars hiring that CEO because of course, the guy cheated and didn't do things right. And, you know, it requires effort. It requires your own management. Now, investing in income property requires a little effort, too, and a little bit of Management. But the difference is the number of moving parts. A business is a very volatile, very tender type of entity. And we've certainly all seen and read and heard the stories, and hopefully, hopefully we haven't actually experienced them, but I bet many of our listeners have. Where a business that one day is at the top of the world, at the top of its game, the next day it's gone, or it's wiped out, or its fortunes have been reversed. So businesses are delicate, tender, volatile entities with a lot of moving parts. So when we talk about investing in income property, this is the investment side of the house. It's not a business. It could be if you do it another way. But the way we do it, we look at it as an investment, not as an extremely active thing. It requires a little bit of effort, a little bit of overseeing. But if you think about the number of moving parts in a business, there are hundreds if not thousands of moving parts. You know, every day you've got to deal with your staff. Every day you've got to deal with your vendors, you've got to deal with the regulatory environment, the competitive environment. There's just a zillion little moving parts. An income property doesn't have very many moving parts. So let's kind of examine the moving parts in an income property investment. Well, you've got the physical asset itself, you've got the house or the apartment building, then you've got, and you know, the maintenance of that physical asset. Okay? So that's a moving part and it's a fairly big one. But you know, again, it's not too much. Okay, so let's look at the rest. You've got the financing on the property. If you financed it, that could be considered a moving part. Right? Because you've got to make the payments on the mortgage every month. Maybe the payments will change based on the taxes and insurance changing and your impound or your escrow account changing. Again, a moving part, but pretty easy to manage and understand. You've got insurance for the property. That's another moving part. Maybe you have a homeowner's association, that would be a moving part. You know, again, you've got the tenant or the property manager, whoever you're managing, whether you're managing the manager or you're self managing and you're managing the tenant directly, that's a moving part. But compared to an employee, a tenant is really, really easy to manage. Okay. In fact, you know, most of your tenants, even if you self manage, you're probably never going to meet them. Okay? So again, these moving parts are simple. And the laws and customs that govern real estate investing have been around for eons. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe thousands, I don't know. You know, the concept of having a property and renting it to somebody has been around for a very, very long time. And so you look at the concept of legal issues and the possibility of litigation and liability. The laws that govern real estate and income property, they're pretty simple and cut and dry. Now listen, over the years I've had a lot of business dealings and I've litigated a few of them. Those things are complicated. I mean, there are just so many little shades of gray in them. And when you get into a legal problem in your business, I mean, you never know if you're going to win or lose. Okay? If a tenant doesn't pay you rent and you take them to court, you know you're going to win. It's pretty clear as long as you did the eviction properly. If you had to evict them. And, you know, it's, it's pretty simple. It's a very simple kind of business. So that's the difference, you know, And I hope that answers the question. It's a good question. You always want to diversify your financial life. So don't put all your eggs in your business because your business is very, very volatile, okay? And it requires a massive amount of attention. Some people that invest in properties think, well, gosh, this is just too hard. It takes too much effort. And I'm thinking, like, what do you mean? Are you kidding me? Keep it in perspective. You're complaining because you had to do a 20 minute phone call with your property manager or your tenant or your insurance agent, yet you spend 55 hours a week on your corporate job or running your small business and you think the real estate is a lot of effort. You must be kidding me. Like, keep things in perspective here, folks. It's just not a lot of effort. So anyway, I hope that answers the question. Okay, thank you for your questions. Go to Jason Hartman dot com. Leave us a message right from the website. We would love to have your questions and I would love to answer them on the air. Okay, so a few other things here. Number one, remember, you have the opportunity to partner with me. If you are listening and you want more capital for your investments, I can be your 19% partner. Yes, I am more than happy to put my money where my mouth is. I love income property investing and with some of the lenders that we have access to Nowadays we can do some more creative stuff so you can buy the property and you can have me as your not totally silent again. I like to talk, but I'm a pretty, pretty much a silent partner where I can invest 19% of the cash and 19% of the closing cost in the deal with you. And we can share the positive cash flow where you get 81% and I get 19%. We share the tax benefits where you get 81% and I get nineteen percent. And if we don't do so well and we have negative cash flow, we would share the downside 81% to 19%. So I'm pretty much interested in investing in any property offered through our network. I doubt, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone. I'd say I didn't want to do a deal that I didn't want to do through our network because I really like our inventory. We go to great pains to establish good inventory in just, you know, the best investment markets in the United States. States. You can find those all@jason hartman.com click on the properties section. And if you want me to be your partner, let your investment counselor know and I would be happy to consider it. Okay. Also the Venture Alliance. Okay. So we are really getting some things going on the Venture alliance, my private mastermind group for select members. And our event that is coming up in San Diego, California. Beautiful San Diego. And that'll be June 12th through the 14th. And some of you have asked about the schedule for that event. If you join the Venture alliance, your financial friends, that's our tagline. And this is a mastermind group that is dedicated to doing deals. I want to get a bunch of bright people together who have resources, who can do deals together. And you know, I tell you, it's amazing to me the power of Mastermind Group. I was in one of my other mastermind groups and I said to the mastermind group that look, I have a lot of properties, I want to diversify a little bit and I want to do more hard money lending or private lending, but I'm finding it difficult to find deals. And I tell you, within the next week I had a bunch of my money placed, okay? And I am now earning very good returns on that money of 10 to 12% annually. And so when you think about it versus having that money in the bank because I can't all invest it in real estate deals and I've got a lot of real estate already, you know, I want to diversify too. Okay. My second favorite investment is hard money. Or private lending. Why? Because it's really simple. And on these deals that I've done over the past maybe what, four years or so, I have not never lost a dime. All of those deals have gone perfectly without a hitch or any inkling of a problem. And so I got a whole bunch of my money placed where basically through the power of my mastermind group, through the power of that group, of just mentioning it at one of our meetings, I basically have increased my return on investment by anywhere from 20 to 24 times. A 20 to 24x increase in return. I mean, that's phenomenal. I just closed one of those hard money deals and I made, I think I made about $22,000 on that deal for just making my money work. I mean, no phone calls, no managers, no nothing. If you're interested in private money lending, we can try and find deals to place your money to. Again, they are kind of scarce. I will say that, you know, the inventory is selling very quickly and that lessens the need for the financing because if it turns over really quick, you know, there's just less need for financing of the deals. But let your investment counselor know, let us know through the jasonhartman.com website if you're interested in lending and we can try to place money for you and get you some good returns on that. Now, on the Venture Alliance, I know that was a little bit of a tangent. Our San Diego event, if you are not planning to join the Venture alliance yet, or if you are unsure, okay, you can come as a guest. So we have the opportunity, opportunity to come as a guest. The guest fee for this very special weekend. This is a high level deal, okay. It's not like one of our seminars, you know, I know we have seminars and events and property tours that are very inexpensive. Those are basically subsidized by the fact that people come to them and they buy properties, of course. Right. But the Venture alliance is a little bit of a different concept. Okay? This is really meant to do some big things, things and live a first class lifestyle. So this will all be first class. Okay. The guest fee is $2,000 to come to the San Diego event. So if you're interested, let us know. Guests can bring a spouse or a significant other and there's a small additional guest fee for them too. But we're going to do some really cool stuff. We're going to have some very special experiences as well. Some real fun things. And one of my, my big ideologies behind this Venture alliance is that I've got to get these bright people together who have resources, who want to grow in their investments to do deals together. But in order to make that happen, we've got to do fun, special, unique, once in a lifetime experiences that we share. Because shared experiences are the stock and trade of friendship. Okay. And friendships need to be built out of this group. We're also setting up a private Facebook group for the Venture alliance where people can come and share ideas and get problems solved and so forth. So if you want to come or you want to join, let us know. This is going to be a real special thing. I'm really excited about it. The schedule is dinner Friday evening, Saturday morning, we'll start with some physical activity, get a little exercise. We'll meet in the, in the conference room at the hotel. We'll have breakfast together after we've done some physical activity. So we've got the endorphins going and we're feeling good. And then we're gonna brainstorm, brainstorm and network for a while and solve problems and, and do sharing and contributions and really cool stuff. And then we're going to go out and do a fun activity in the afternoon, more to come on that. And then we're going to have a really classy dinner together. We're going to indulge, we're going to have fun. And then the next morning it's kind of repeat the same thing for Sunday morning, a little bit of a physical activity, get together, brainstorm, network, facilitate the mastermind group in the conference room. And then the afternoon we're going to do a fun activity, once in a lifetime type experience. And then we're going to adjourn Sunday afternoon. So these are always on weekends because I know a lot of you have day jobs and corporate jobs which is what enables you to qualify for loans, to be building your income property portfolio. So look forward to more information on the Venture alliance and ask us about that. If you're interested, we can send you an application. Our application is almost developed. It'll be done in the next few days here. And then you can get an info packet and application all in one. Okay, Now a couple things that are kind of interesting in the news. One of them, I could not believe this. You know. Yeah, actually, sorry, I could believe it. Mr. Warren Buffett, hypocrite extraordinaire. Now why do I say he's a hypocrite? Because you know, all of these left leaning capitalists, they're all capitalists when it comes to their own money and their own portfolio and boy, I'm gonna play an interview that I did recently for you on an upcoming episode that you're really gonna, it's gonna blow your mind talking about how these people, when they invest in these funds and these deals, whether they be LLCs, real estate deals or funds, how a lot of them don't pay the rack rate. And Warren Buffett's a great example. You know, when he invested in, what was it during the financial crisis, didn't he buy a bunch of shares of bank of America? And of course he's telling everybody to buy them. He yet they're buying at a much higher price than he paid. You know, what a hypocrite, right? Here is another example of Warren Buffett's disgusting hypocrisy. This is a newser article by John Johnson and it says investigation. Warren Buffett's firm preys on poor people. And you know, we've done shows before talking about the incredible returns you can can make in mobile home investing. Well, this is certainly a company I've heard of. And you know, I kind of forgot that Warren Buffett owns this company or you know, Berkshire Hathaway owns it, right? So it's called Clayton Homes. And get this, his mobile home company traps buyers in pricey loans, says Seattle Times piece. Okay. And so I'll just read a little bit of this to you and put in my own snarky commentary of of course, Warren Buffett's image as an avuncular business genius who has all American interests at heart might take a hit after a scathing investigation in the Seattle Times and the center for Public Integrity. It alleges that Clayton Homes, a giant in the mobile home park industry, in the mobile home industry owned by Buffett's paper, Berkshire Hathaway, is duping poor people with unscrupulous loans. Here's the main summation. Buffett's mobile home empire promises low income Americans the dream of homeownership. But Clayton relies on predatory sales practices, exorbitant fees and interest rates that can exceed 15%, trapping many buyers in loans they can't afford and in homes that are almost impossible to sell or refinance. Okay, and listen, I know a little bit about this business. I'm not an expert, but I know a little bit about it. I would say this is true, okay? Because those just totally depreciate. And if you're paying 15% on, you know, with this whole pitch that you're going to be able to be a homeowner, okay, you know, mobile home homes depreciate in Value, you'd be much better off buying a used mobile home and doing a financing deal on that or just paying cash for it if you're lower on the economic spectrum. Right, but of course, none of those people are listening to me right now, so my advice is irrelevant. So, anyway, the article goes on to say the investigation looked at more than 100 sales in 41 states and found a consistent array of deceptive practices. For example, Clayton goes by so many names, at least 18 names, that mobile home customers who think they're shopping around actually aren't. Okay? So here they basically have this pseudo monopoly. They've got all these different names for the same company. So, you know, people think they're shopping around and they're getting the same kind of prices from each. And so they think, hey, I did my due diligence, 15%. Basically, you know, what I'd call usury, although apparently not legal usury is what they got to pay everywhere. That's the going rate. So. So hunting. It's the best we can do. Let's just take it right? You know, let's just get this ridiculous predatory loan. In my humble opinion, okay, I don't want you suing me, Warren Buffett, so I'm going to be a little careful there, okay? So the article, it says it controls virtually every aspect of the deal, from the construction to the real estate sale to the loan itself, a fact that customers often don't realize. Because of those different names, buyers often encounter exorbitant fees, loan terms that change abruptly and ruthless. Ruthless collection agents. Spokespersons for Clayton and Berkshire would not be interviewed. Oh, how convenient. But a Clayton statement insists that, quote, that its, quote, policies and procedures and training are designed to ensure that customers have a choice of lenders, reports Omaha World Herald. Anyway, you know, you can find the whole article in the Seattle Times. And you know what? I don't doubt that for a minute. Now, listen, there are some things I do like about Warren Buffet. And Warren, if you want to come on the show, I'd love to have you on as a guest. And I promise you I won't pick on you either, because you've done, obviously, some incredible things. And I love your value investing ideology. I agree with it. I apply it to real estate. And I love what you said about investing in real estate a few years back where you said something to the effect of, and many people have seen the YouTube video that said if you could find a way to manage thousands of homes, you would buy them yourself. You were right. And I'm glad You can't find a way to do it. And I'm glad Wall street can't do that very effectively and the hedge funds can't do that very effectively because that's what leaves the opportunity to us, the small investor. We're operating in this very fragmented market where everybody does everything so differently and it's just too hard for you bigwigs to manage. So stay out of our business. We appreciate not having you here, but I do appreciate the quote and the advice. You were obviously right. Anyway, that's the thing for Warren, but, you know, it's just so hypocritical. You know, he's a big supporter of Obama. You know, all this leftist crap that is all window dressing, in my opinion. Most of the time, you know, where they're all saying, oh, we gotta help the poor. But in the reality, you're just screwing the poor is what you're doing. You know, in fact, I gotta even mention this one. One of these mastermind groups I'm in. I thought it was funny. So this group is a whole bunch of real estate investors and landlords, and they do a charity thing and they go out and find someone in the local community. I just thought this was kind of like such an irony, you know, that Alanis Morissette song, Isn't it ironic, don't you think? They go and find this woman who is in big trouble financially. They raise some money for a whole feel good thing, get some attention by the local media. And what were they raising money for? To stop an eviction. And I thought, isn't that funny? The same people will say, you know, and I'm not saying this is necessarily even wrong or right or whatever. I just think it's kind of ironic, that's all. Yet the same people will get up and talk about how we gotta be super strict and evict our tenants when they don't pay us. And I will. People say that too. I just thought that was such an irony, you know, it's. I don't know, Human nature is a weird thing. What can I say? That's my commentary in the section. Let's stop ragging on Warren Buffett here. Under the category of it's an amazing time to be alive. Do you remember, people, that lab grown hamburger? What was this about two years ago? I think we heard about the hamburger that was grown in a laboratory. And many years ago, probably 10 or 11 years ago, I talked about how diamonds, real diamonds, can be produced in a laboratory. They're not cubic zirconia. They're not fake, they're a diamond. It's just a matter of how they were created. Look, babies can be created in a laboratory, too. Test tube babies, okay? All of this stuff, it really changed the game and changes our thinking. Well, originally, and this is the, this speaks to the deflationary aspect of technology and how it's such an amazing time to be alive. Originally, that hamburger that was grown, and I'd also say grown as a quote, okay, In a laboratory. It cost $325,000 thousand dollars to do that. Originally. Guess what? It's now $11. It's a real hamburger without any cruelty to animals or any big pollution. Because by the way, slaughtering animals and eating what's called high on the food chain. And listen, I eat this stuff, okay? I love hamburgers, okay? But I do think Americans eat too much meat, you know, But I, I do believe we were designed to be omnivores. And by the way, a little tangent here. If you think about it, in the old days, you know, when we were living in caves, right, if we were to eat meat and eat an animal, that would be the rare special occasion, okay? You know, when we, when we hunted, it was hard to hunt, okay? You know, you had to go out and chase animals around and, you know, get them and then, you know, cook them and prep them and all kinds. It's a lot of work. It's a lot easier to just, you know, pick nuts and berries, right? That, that was much easier to eat that way as a vegetarian in the old days, right? And sugar was much harder to get, obviously then too, you know what, we were going to take a sugar cane and break it up and chop it up and mince it so you can have some sugar. You know, that this kind of stuff, I think, speaks to the amounts of these types of foods we should consume. And so, you know, meat was a rare occasion for primitive human beings and it was a special occasion anyway, you know, kind of a different ideology, right? So maybe it wasn't something we were meant to eat as much of as we eat today. So there's my middle ground on the topic. But, you know, maybe someday in the not too distant future, probably we will be creating food in laboratories and there will be no animal cruelty and a lot less pollution, because eating high in the food chain creates a lot of pollution and uses a lot of resources. Let me give you an example from memory here. Many years ago ago when I tried being a vegetarian for about six years and glad I changed back because I didn't think it was so good for me. But my girlfriend at the time gave me a book called Diet for a New America by John Robbins, heir to the Baskin Robbins fortune, who walked away from it, by the way, because of his ideology. In that book, it showed these studies of how much water it takes to create one pack pound of edible beef. And it was like 5200 gallons of water. Because if you think about it, you got water crops for cows to eat and then you've got to give the cow water, then you got to kill the cow, you got to wash the meat, you got to do all this stuff, right? And that comes out to 5,200 gallons of water for a pound of meat of beef, okay? Versus pound of edible watermelon, only 40 gallons of water. And that was the most water consuming of all of the fruits and vegetables. So if you eat broccoli, it even was less than that. Okay, so that's just an example. But it really is an amazing time to be alive. So maybe the hunger problem will be solved and maybe hopefully the nutrition problem will be solved too, because God knows we need help with that in this country and around the world. It's just a mess. So on upcoming episodes, we got a lot to talk about. I want to talk about the salary required to be middle class in every state in the union, because as nationwide real estate investors, that's really quite enlightening. You know, what does it take to live in all of these places? What does it take from our kids tenants to live in all those places? And we're also going to talk more about institutional ownership of single family rentals and whether that is a thing or not. We're going to talk about the markets around the country that are creating the most jobs. Just a lot of good stuff coming up. We've also got some interesting stuff that one of our clients, Bill sent over on some different funds. You know, imagine this involved in a bunch of fraud, stealing money from people. And these are some fascinating stories. So Bill, thank you for sending that over to me as well. Just a lot of great stuff coming up. I hope you'll join us for the Memphis Property Tour. Go to jason hartman.com to register for that. Let us know if you're interested in application or a packet of information for the Venture Alliance. Thank you so much for listening and and I'll see you on the next episode, episode 500 with Guy Kawasaki. What's great about the shows you'll find on jasonhartman.com is that if you want to learn how to finance your next big real estate deal, there's a show for that. If you want to learn more about food storage and the best way to keep those onions from smelling up everything else, there's a show for that. If you honestly want to know more about business ethics, there's a show for that. And if you just want to get away from it all and need to know something about world travel, there's even a show for that. Yep, there's a show for just about anything only from jasonhartman.com or type in Jason Hartman in the iTunes store. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company All Rights Resorts. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email mediaartmanmedia.com Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. 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